The Retail Innovation Awards are a yearly distinction honoring individual retail executives who prove their change-driving zest via innovation. The competition for 2016 (the third edition so far) is open, and so are the nominations, as you can see on the Retail Innovation conference website, so go ahead and propose a nominee if you have someone in mind.
Until this year’s edition will name its winners, let’s review some of the top brands and their executives that were the 2015 award recipients.
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Nina Alexander-Hurst, VP of Customer Experience and SWAT, BaubleBar
Bauble Bar is an online jewelry startup that got its fame by managing to provide fashionable yet low-priced jewelry, or “fast-fashion” jewelry, as Business Insider dubs it. They further expanded into brick-and-mortar stores and experimented with pop-up stores. Nina Alexander-Hurst received the award on account of the innovative customer relationships activities that made her team offer customer feedback and customer experience in a much more effective way. Here you may check a 23 minutes podcast on how Nina and her team focused on creative customer-related activities – if you should find the time and the curiosity.
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Jason Goldberger, President, Target.com
Coming from Gilt Home to Target in 2013, Jason Goldberger became in 2014 president of Target.com & Mobile, where he focused on omnichannel fulfillment, curbside pickup and improved mobile experiences. With a 7 years past experience at Amazon and a lifelong career in e-commerce, Goldberger fitted right into the Target leadership team effort of emphasizing mobile and digital experiences.
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Daniel Neukomm, CEO, La Jolla
Coming from the O’Neill group, Daniel Neukomm has aced the one-to-one personalization, managing to create tailored experiences and synchronize search recommendations with behavior analytics in what the customers are concerned; making use of the modern tech tools in the customer experience field, La Jolla’s CEO is also an advisor of Consumer Innovations with GreenHouse Capital Partners.
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Leslie Anderson, Senior Director, Head of Field HR, Old Navy
Leslie Anderson works for the tenth most innovative brand in 2015, according to BizBash. Nevertheless, the Retail Innovation Awards distinction honors her role in supporting over 55 thousands Old Navy employees from more than one thousand stores, and in coming up with efficient solutions such as the free online retail training destined to help applicants for store positions. The Old Navy LearnUp program empowered more than 200 thousands entry-level job seekers by providing publicly available, free specialized training, regardless of their geographical location.
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Richard Armour, Senior Director, Multi-Channel, GameStop
GameStop, the American video game, consumer electronics, and wireless services retailer, seems to be a destined innovation awards winner – they also won the gold prize at PYMNTS.com 2015 Innovator Awards.
But what makes them innovation champions? Implementing solutions such as GameStop Exchange, where customers are free to sell unused gift cards and receive e-gift cards, redeemable at any GameStop location, via a partnership with Cardpool the company’s services expanded to the to the gift card exchange industry.
Richard Armour focused on omnichannel strategies and expansion across all available company websites and channels, leading a team that excelled in online marketing analytics and related techniques.
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Andrew Blackmon and Patrick Coyne, Co-Founders, The Black Tux
The men’s fashion company specializing in the online tuxedo and suit rental industry was a brave new startup in 2012, aiming to answer the co-founders poor experiences with tuxedo and suit rentals by providing their own efficient rental service for event clothes. The Black Tux website simplifies and speeds up the entire selection process – with a sleek, elegant interface.
Having a waiting list of approximately 30 thousands customers just after inauguration, the business managed to raise an impressive $15 million in venture funding, proving their idea to be spot on and expertly deployed.
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Susan Soares, Vice President of Retail Operations, Alex and Ani
Another jewelry producer, Alex and Ani, emerged in 2004, and gradually made a name for itself; in 2010 the company expanded its operations, while 2015 marked its first mobile app – downloaded of circa 80 thousand times in just the first three weeks after its launch.
DigiDay praised the company’s lifestyle content, along with its innovative customer culture. Susan Soares pioneered in leading-edge technology employed for enhancing the in-store experience, as well as in the company training tools. The Washington Post mentioned their stores’ iBeacons, while Inc.com plainly stated that Alex and Ani is “pioneering the future of retail”.
These are just a few of the retail innovation champions – since the LinkedIn dedicated slide share mentioned the winners in alphabetical order, continuing with their success stories, we chose some of the 2015 winners to share the spotlight in a random selection, with no intended disrespect for the other winners.
The complete list is available here – page two of the slide, or here, on the previously quoted Awards sections from the Retail Innovation Conference Webpage. Don’t forget that for this years’ edition, the nominations are open via this form, so feel free to use to propose someone for the Retail Innovation award.
Looking forward for this year’s nominees and winners and the way they managed to embrace and raise to the challenge set by the disruptive forces in retail, we salute such industry events.
